Courage to Move On?

“If both your parents speak German, why isn’t German your mother tongue?” Interesting question? Living in Germany and attending a German language school, this question was one I was often asked. The time period in which my parents were born, my father in 1925 and my mother in 1931 both in Europe, marked their lives significantly. How could anyone born in that time and place not be affected by Hitler, and his Third Reich? Upon mentioning their stories, I was surprised at the shocked reaction I often received. I feel honoured to be the daughter of a German and a Jew, because their story is one of redemption. I hope that by telling it, I may kindle a spark of healing in others. I’m proud of my German heritage and although the horrors of the past should not be forgotten, we need not carry them like chains forever.

My mother, Charlotte Berger, was born into a Jewish family in Vienna, Austria on July 6, 1931. She had a very happy childhood with her parents Josef and Valeria Berger who ran a bakery. As an only child, my mother had to occupy herself a lot. Her favourite items to sample from the bakery were salt sticks. The Wiener Prater in Vienna, a park adorned with avenues of chestnut trees, was a place where she spent many happy hours enjoying both the good food and drink sold at the various stands, and the activities of the amusement park. Her favourite was the world-famous Riesenrad. From the top she could view the borders of Hungary or catch a glimpse of the Danube River snaking its course through Vienna. Playing at the Schloss Schnbrunn, a castle surrounded by formal gardens, and trips to the mountains, were among the many childhood memories my mom cherishes. Another memorable experience was at the age of six being sent on a summer holiday into the Austrian Alps where she could ride a cable car. During this holiday her parents visited her and her mother picked her a beautiful bouquet of flowers. This moment was captured on film and the photograph of my mother with her mother with the bouquet of flowers is now especially beloved, as these happy family times were soon to end forever.

While walking home from school in 1938, my mother remembers seeing parades of Nazi soldiers on horseback. This is her first memory of the Hitler regime. Her parents refused to vote for Hitler because, as they told my mother, he was against Jewish people. From this time on things became more and more difficult. Stores that were run by non-Jewish owners were strictly closed to Jews. My grandfather’s bakery was confiscated and he had to earn his living by selling wine. My mother remembers coming out of school one day and being chased by boys who were shouting, “Jew! Jew!” Once at night she woke up and heard a loud knock on the door. She and her mother hid in a closet. Her father went to the door and was ordered to go and scrub the streets after the Nazis had drawn graffiti over everything. He refused to go and somehow this was accepted. After the 11th of November, 1938, Kristallnacht, her parents became increasingly concerned about the danger Jewish people were in, and decided it was time to take action.

My mother’s parents heard of a British effort to rescue Jewish children from Europe by transporting the children to England by train. This effort, organized by Norman Bentwich, Norbert Wollheim, and others of a Jewish agency of volunteers, became known as the Kindertransport. Her parents found a farm in England owned by a Christian community, which was, incidentally, founded in Germany in the 1920s and kicked out of Germany by Hitler’s henchmen. My mother was excited about the idea of living on a farm because she had been impressed by the horses she had seen at the riding school in Vienna. They decided to send their only child, then only 7 years old, in the hope of following soon after. However this was never to be.

In June of 1939, shortly before her eighth birthday, she boarded a “Kindertransport” alone. The train departed at night in order to attract less attention to the departure of so many children. Only one parent could come to the train station, so her father took her as it was far too painful a parting for her mother. Her mother packed her favourite food, hamburger with onions, so she would have some food for the journey. My mother remembers her place on the train being right above the wheel. It was very loud and she could not sleep. She cried for hours until a volunteer who accompanied the children kindly offered her a different place to sleep. Later at the train station she lost her luggage and stood alone and cried for sheer frustration and disorientation until someone helped her to find it. After arriving in Dover she was met by her uncle who took her to his home in London where she spent the night. Her aunt told her years later that on arrival her face was smudged with tears and she was quite dirty.

A member of the community who ran the farm where she was destined to go accompanied her by train up to Gloucestershire, England. Initially a single woman took her in very lovingly. However the pain of separation from her parents was very great and she cried bitterly many times, especially at night. The children in this community, which had its own school, showed her a lot of affection. With the interesting experiences on the farm she soon adjusted to her new situation. The love and acceptance she felt quickly made her forget the taunting discrimination she had experienced in Vienna.

However, the community, to which she had come had both German and British members, and was soon forced to leave England and travel to Paraguay. When my mother’s parents were asked if they were in agreement for her to go they replied, “Yes, take her as far away from Hitler as possible.” In 1941 my mother, together with all of the departing community members travelled by boat to Paraguay in South America. She exchanged letters for a time with her parents but at one point this correspondence came to a complete halt.

My mother remembers times when it was just tough not to have a home to call your own, or parents to confide in. Once, at the age of ten or eleven, a mother who not only had many children of her own but had married a widower and taken in his children as well took her on her lap and comforted her when she was sad. This meant so much to her because no one had ever done this since parting from her own mother.

In 1945 my mother received a telegram from her father for the first time since 1942. The telegram was sent from Bergen-Belsen, the concentration camp he was in, saying that he was alive and well but that her mother was missing. Not long afterwards, she heard the actual truth. The father of the family with whom she was staying told her the news that her mother had perished in a ghetto in Poland. Although her father had known this already, he did not wish to break the news to my mother since he still imagined her as a small child and it hurt him too much to tell her. She also heard through a doctor who had been caring for her father during his hospitalization after the liberation, that at that time, her father weighed only 45 kilograms. This was very hard news for a fourteen-year-old and she wept bitterly.

In 1950 when my mother was nineteen, a handsome young German, Roland Keiderling, a member of the Christian community which had taken her in 1939, fell in love with her. To him there was not a doubt that they were meant for each other. His parents had joined the community and although they were Germans, because of their resistance to Hitler, were also forced to flee to Paraguay. Right from the start my father, although cautioned by German friends that my mother was Jewish, treasured the thought that he as a German could marry my mother, a Jew, and through that union some of the terrible injuries that had occurred in the recent years between these two peoples might be healed. Their love brought them extreme happiness especially because of their shared faith and trust in Jesus. They were married on October 5, 1952. A future of love and hope opened up from which a family of thirteen children came.

My mother’s father gradually gained strength, and during the time of his recovery met a woman by the name of Dora who cared for him and whom he later married. In 1949 he immigrated to the United States and lived in Niagara Falls, New York until his death in 1959. Of course he had a great wish to see my mother once more, but it was not possible. In the last years of his life members of the church community where my mother lived visited him in New York and heard from his second wife that he often sat at the table with his head in his hands and brooded. Although he lived till 1959 he never passed on any terrible stories of his experiences, or bitterness or hatred for what happened to my mother. On the contrary, he wrote to her and reminded her of all the special things they had done together while still living in Vienna, like how much she liked strawberry ice cream, or when they went ice skating together.

As one of her daughters, I never detected a speck of bitterness or anger from my mother in regard to what at such a young age brought on this painful and final separation from her parents. Her father definitely suffered at the hands of the Nazis, but he chose not to pass on that pain and suffering to my mother. I believe that it was because of this choice, that even though throughout the course of her life my mother learned more and more of the atrocities the Jews underwent, it did not spark hatred within her. In their case, a cycle of bitterness and hate was not carried further from generation to generation but ended in Bergen-Belsen. My grandfather’s attitude was significant for my mother’s life because in the 1970s my mother met an aunt who was still angry at what the Nazis had done. The hatred in her aunt toward the Nazis sent shivers down my mother’s spine because it was such a foreign approach to what she had learned from her father.

Although my mother never saw her parents again, and I never knew my grandparents, I am proud of my parent’s ability to rise above this pain and build for our future. I admit that Germany has known some of the most terrible atrocities, but I also appreciate its unsurpassed heritage of music, art, poetry and literature. I hope that this story of my mother’s and father’s celebration of life through forgiveness, healing and love can be an inspiration and encouragement to both Jews and Germans today who continue to struggle under the burdens that history has placed on them.